What I’m Trying to Make Work Right Now

Right now, everything overlaps.

Work, life, ideas, logistics—none of it is happening in neat, separate lanes. It’s all happening at once, and most of the time I’m just trying to make it work a little better.

Work

Lately, that’s meant spending a lot of time with AI.

Not in a polished, “I know exactly what I’m doing” way. More like opening things up, testing, breaking them, figuring out what “markdown” even means, and getting unreasonably frustrated when I hit limits or can’t upgrade an account because billing addresses don’t match. (*cough* Anthropic *cough*)

I’ve been building with it—especially around the work we’re doing. We have a large pre-campaign brief that takes real time and thought, and I keep coming back to how to make that easier without losing what makes it good. At the same time, I’m leading marketing for an analytics product that I genuinely believe in, and AI has helped me do work I would have otherwise struggled to get to.

But it’s messy.

There’s no real playbook for how I’m using it. Just a general direction, a lot of autonomy, and space to figure things out as I go. Which is incredible—and also unclear, in the best way.

I keep coming back to this idea:

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

And:

“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path.” — Joseph Campbell

That’s what this feels like. Not following something. Building it while I’m in it.

Life

At the same time, I have three kids, one of them eight months old, and I’ve only been back at work for two months.

There is no routine. Every day is a version of chaos.

We’re trying to create structure, repeatable mornings, smoother nights, but some days that looks like jelly beans for dinner and a movie night instead of bedtime. And honestly, that’s okay.

I reorganize something in the house every other day, convinced I’ve finally figured out a system, and then three months later I’m reworking it because it didn’t actually hold up.

There are places where I’m incredibly methodical, like how the dishwasher gets loaded, and others I avoid entirely, like the secretary desk in my foyer or the coat closet, because I’m not ready to deal with whatever’s inside.

It’s inconsistent. It’s imperfect. It’s very real.

Where it all overlaps

The interesting part is how similar it all feels.

At work, I’m constantly testing ideas, building systems, trying to create something that actually works, and letting go of what doesn’t.

At home, I’m doing the exact same thing.

I’m building summer camp schedules for my kids, eight weeks mapped out so they have something fun and intentional to do. At the same time, I have post-it notes scattered across my desk making sure everything gets done.

Some systems work. Some don’t. Most need adjusting.

What I’m trying to do now is give myself space to figure that out without needing it to be perfect.

One idea I come back to a lot, at work especially, is failing fast.

If you overthink something too much, you don’t start. And if you don’t start, you never learn whether it works.

So try it. If it doesn’t work, move on. If it does, build on it.

That mindset shows up in parenting too.

Sometimes the plan doesn’t work. A kid doesn’t want to go to bed. Something feels off. So instead of forcing it, we pivot. We pile into bed, put on a movie, and call it a night.

At the end of the day, they’ll sleep. They won’t still be in my bed when they’re in high school. But they’ll remember that they had a place that felt safe.

And that matters more.

I don’t have a system for all of this yet.

But I think I’m starting to see where one might exist.